This week was a tough one in the Borderlands of Mormonism. Lots of anger was expressed, lots of things that have disrupted my sense of peace.
In his poem, Choose Something Like a Star, Robert Frost poses how he maintained his peace amidst outrage:
“So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.”
This seems to me to be a time when the mob is swayed. On one hand, last night, President Nelson spoke to a crowd of nearly 50,000 people in Seattle — all excited to praise our prophet as being god’s representative on the earth. On the other, we speak of blame in the borderlands, and the reaction of outrage on social media against various and sundry — especially in contempt towards each other in this unique space.
Can we choose something like a star to stay our minds on?
I wonder.
Frost expressed, “But to be wholly taciturn In your reserve is not allowed.” A star in space is remote, uninvolved in the insanity of the maddening crowd, and yet even inaccessible, remote, distant…impractical.
I feel lonely at these times, amidst the carrying of praise and blame — the noise of the present.
Last night, amid this feeling, I went to the adult session of our local stake conference. I dread these meetings — normally thinking that stake conference makes for good church vacations.
But I went. My wife noticed I was wearing sneakers and black jeans, rather than a suit. She said I was being rebellious. I said I just didn’t want to be a Zoramite. A wonderful, very faithful friend noticed my shoes and thanked me, sincerely, for being myself rather than the usual stuffy Mormons we all are.
For the first part of the meeting, I was simply trying to get comfortable for a nap. I winced when some of the talks covering ministering weaved in worthiness to minister, or embracing “exact obedience” as a prequalifier to minister, or that ministering involves fixing people so that they come into exact obedience…something like that…
My attitude was poor, I’ll admit. I was *choosing* to hear messages that confirmed my contempt.
But then, something happened. A tenor got up and gave a special number. He sang the purest, simplest melody:
Come Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of God’s unchanging love.
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I’m come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
Eternity paused for me in that moment. I heard something else, something divine, in the poetry of God’s Love.
And it changed my heart.
The Stake President got up. I’ve struggled a bit with him, prejudging him a bit, because he is a bit similar to his grandfather Bruce R McKonkie. It’s amazing what pre-judgment does to us.
Oh how wrong I am to pre-judge others!
President McConkie spoke of how Jesus didn’t come to the righteous, for the whole have no need of a physician. He spoke of how Jesus dined with publicans and sinners.
He said, “We are the publicans and sinners. All of us are broken. All of us need the Physician”.
He related how a woman with an issue of blood for eleven years approached Jesus to touch his robe so that she might be healed. He expressed how this woman went from being called by an ambiguous “certain woman”, to being called “this woman” when she was noticed, to Jesus calling her “daughter”.
And Jesus made her whole, by the unchanging love of grace.
President McConkie then closed quoting Portia, in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice:
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Twice blessed.
Tears come to my eyes as I consider how much I need mercy for the wrongs I have done, yet that mercy can only be realized in me as I express mercy towards others. I seek grace — because by grace only am I whole — and yet, I know that that grace cannot be sought. It only is.
Mobs may rage around me, but as I look up into the heavens, I behold a mystery — the mystical oneness of all that is — and a calmness comes over my soul. I choose God’s Love as my star, and it transforms me in my weakness, in my angst, in my troubles…and in the moment I do,
I am whole. I am one.
We *may* choose something like a star,
To stay our minds on, and be staid.